Auto Chess

In January 2019, Dota Auto Chess, released by the small Chinese developer group Drodo as a custom Dota 2 map, had been played by eight million people by May. You never fight directly -- you buy units, place them, and the fight plays itself out. Give up control, and what is left is pure thinking. Valve, watching its popularity, released an official version, and Riot released Teamfight Tactics; the genre stood on its feet within half a year. It is, for now, the latest thread in the lineage of formats born from mods -- DOOM's WADs to Counter-Strike to DotA to this.